ASUS RT-N66U WAN <--> WAN EE BRIGHTBOX working OK! Why?

[Lapb]

Hi all

I wonder if someone could shed some light on what is going on with my current setup because I'm not quite understanding it.

For a long while I've simply connected my RT-N66U into one of the LAN ports on the Brightbox and had it all working fine (disabling DHCP and NAT on the RT-N66U etc). It was a shame that the WAN port functionality on the RT-N66U was not being used i.e. was not showing on the admin console pages - but I was not connecting to EE via a modem - just via their supplied BrightBox modem/router.

But yesterday I was playing around - trying to get another port free on the RT-N66U - and I connected the WAN port on the RT-N66U to the WAN port on the Brightbox, and hey presto (after a little fiddling), it all worked fine. I love that the ASUS admin pages show connection to time servers etc.

Now I always thought that the WAN port was used for the modem, so what is going on here? I guess it's because the WAN port is a port used for data leaving/entering the network?

The RT-N66U (192.168.1.1) has a WAN IP address of (192.168.0.109 at the moment).
The BrightBox (192.168.0.1) hasa WAN IP address of (95.xxx.xxx.xxx) and is showing an Unknown Device 192.168.0.109 connected (LAN4 connection type).

I mean, is this a good setup?

I'd like to keep all my devices at home on a single network - separate to the network that's plugged into the internet i.e. a separate network for the RT-N66U and Brightbox - but despite loving that it all works at the moment I'm going to have to take this down and go back to the LAN <--> LAN route as I don't understand it (hence not sure what I'm letting myself open to).

Is there a correct way to do this?

Thanks in advance

 

[ColinTaylor]

Your new network setup is perfectly valid. The only disadvantage is that you have a double NAT situation, i.e. the N66U's WAN port has a private IP address not a public one. But that doesn't normally matter unless you are doing something that requires people to connect into your network, like multi-player gaming or running a server.

Any devices that are still connecting directly to the Brightbox will not be able to see devices connected directly to the N66U (but it works OK the other way around).